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We lack only one wand now. Victory is near! I can see us striding through the gates of Cauldron, triumphant! And then I remember what we have lost here under Cauldron. Myntilly thinks that we can bring Sadi”s soul back to us with a druidic spell.

I wonder what Sadi would think — the spell would put her soul into a new body. Male, female, human or halfling…. only Pelor knows how it would resolve. I can attempt to contact Sadi”s soul. That sort of magic is generally abhorrent to me; it is too close to the death magic that Persia practices. Contacting our comrade seems worthy and so I will attempt.

We are ever closer to our goal. One wand left. It is amazing to think of what we have accomplished in a few short days. The wedding was, wait, the wedding was three days ago. I think. One loses track below ground. I have no doubt that the rains have begun, but I pray that we will be in time.

I feel the wand close by. It is perhaps 200 yards away. I have no doubt that we will have to fight, fight to the death, for the last wand. Pelor is with us. Even in this dark place, he is with us. I could not have destroyed the undead without his help, and yet I did destroy a group of zombies and then Tarkelar himself.

We came through an opening, following my sense of a wand”s location. We came through an opening and into a room of half a dozen zombies. The room was dark. It was hard to get a good sense of the dimensions of the room, of its depth. We each readied for battle. I raised high my silver face of Pelor and called down his wrath on the unnatural creatures before me. Pelor answered my prayer tenfold — several of the zombies blew apart. It was equally dramatic and gross.

As we stepped farther into the room, towards the remaining zombies, we saw a smaller figure among them. My first thought was “Is this Skavin, the halfling?” I heard Cinder mutter, “What”s a dwarf doing down here?” So I knew that I was wrong. And when we saw him swing at a zombie, I knew he was a friend. He told us his name is Gremn. He is in search of gems. I tried to peer into his heart — a friend in battle is
sometimes anything but a friend when the fighting is done. He seems to be as he appears: a dwarf in search of treasure and happy to tag along as we try to finish our mission.

We moved past the zombie bodies to a shallow cavern. The room curved around to the right so we could only see a small area. What we could see was in jumbles. There were opened and unopened crates and parts of tables stacked against the wall. Cinder and Gremn peeked around and saw a figure which, upon description could only be Tarkelar. Tall, skeletal, fused armor. Yep, that”s him.

Cinder moves like smoke sometimes and she slipped around the close corner and hid behind a table. Although he did not seem to see Cinder, he must have known we were there — he cast a silence spell. I was not worried about that. I could call down a turning from outside of the circle of silence.

Cinder threw her last tanglefoot bag at Tarkelar. It exploded all over him. We need to get some more of those bags! If we needed to engage in close combat, the glue would help to slow him down. Gremn was standing beside me and I heard him utter some words and an opaque hue seemed to wrap around Tarkelar.

Then it was my turn. Knowing that if we were lucky, I would have the chance to come face to face with an undead leader, I had prayed that Pelor would grant me a chance to try to destroy him armed only with my faith. With holy symbol raised high, I fixed my gaze on Tarkelar and imagined the full power of the sun pouring down on him. In my mind it was like a barrel of light pouring over him. And in an instant, he seemed to contract and then expand — as though he had taken the deepest of breaths. And then Tarkelar collapsed, dead again.

There is never enough time to savor a victory or mourn a lost comrade. When I”d caught my breath, I focused on the last wand still lost. There! Close by. Onward, my friends!